Room for Love (7 page)

3

Filmmaker seeks female flatmate. Big, sunny room in 2-bd SoHo 1ft on Grand (Mercer/Greene). Own bath. Shared kitchen w/new stainless appliances. Lovely. Quiet. Loaded with light. Flat so bright, I must wear shades & a visor inside. I work from home, travel often. Easy to live w/, highly intelligent, sparkling sense of humor. Seek same. Call Graham

When my alarm shrieks in my ear the next morning, I leap out of bed and stand trembling, naked, my toes gripping the cold, wood floor, trying to figure out if the evil sound is coming from outside or inside my skull. I'm wondering if someone might have launched a car alarm through my bedroom window when reality clanks me hard around the head and I grab the offending clock to turn it off. The ensuing silence soothes me until the sensation that someone used my head as a bowling ball takes its place. I groan and drag myself into the bathroom to find pain relief.

Without getting dressed, I creep into the kitchen to put water on for green tea, rip off the end of the stale baguette on top of the fridge, and sit down at my desk to check e-mail. There's nothing good except a belated e-card from Brad, Courtney's husband, apologetic about missing my party. I am relieved that he stayed away, because I hate it when he witnesses my shame. Brad and I have been close since college, and he plays the protective big brother I never had. Unfortunately, all his friends are either married professors, twenty-something musicians who smoke too much pot, or residents of Seattle, his hometown. I have had drunken escapades with many of them and we don't mention most of their names anymore. I tell Brad that I wish technology would advance to the point where he could clone himself. He tells me I'd make Brad-clone love me and dump him, because he's a nice, normal guy and I only fall for dickheads. He's probably right.

Brad teaches music composition at NYU and plays in a band. An amazing thing happened a few months back: He self-produced a solo album of ballads that he'd written through the years, and it took off like a rocket. There's this one song, “Still in It,” about him just kind of watching Courtney piddling around the kitchen and making coffee and watering a plant. He describes how she gasps when the cat jumps onto the counter and glances at him, embarrassed, and it makes him fall in love all over again, even though they've spent every minute together for the last twelve years. It's not corny at all. It has a rock 'n' roll beat and avoids love-song clichés. I'm not exactly objective, but the song brings tears to my eyes every time and I feel honored to know the guy who wrote it. Some DJ in Portland heard it and next thing, it was being played in dorm rooms nationwide and turning up on celebrity playlists and Brad was being compared to Jeff Buckley and the Coldplay singer who knocked up Gwyneth Paltrow, and we were like, “Our little Brad?” He got a record deal, took a sabbatical, and tomorrow he starts a tour of the whole friggin' planet (or at least the North American part). Needless to say, with all the organizing, rehearsing, and stressing out, he doesn't have much time to attend the birthday parties of mere mortals like me. The e-card's a funny one, with a monkey playing “Happy Birthday” on the banjo. It sticks its big, pink tongue out at the end.

When my kettle squeals, my sister, whom I hadn't noticed sacked out on the couch, bolts upright. She's wearing her bra and underwear and is wrapped up in one of the curtains that are eventually supposed to adorn my living room windows.

“Jesus Christ, you scared the shit out of me,” I say, pulling myself out of my chair and into the kitchen, shoving a heap of Alicia's clothes on the floor with my foot as I go.

“You're always naked,” she says. “It's kind of gross.”

“I was hammered when I got home last night.”

She grunts and goes back to sleep. It will be nice when my sister finds a place to sleep that is not in my apartment.

A half an hour later, I walk very slowly out my door, past the woman who sits on a white, padded stool on my block advocating Bible studies, and notice tiny green buds just beginning to peek through the tips of the branches on a skinny tree behind her. In spite of my throbbing head, I feel relieved. There is still a chill in the air, but at least spring is on its way. Summer is my favorite season, but there is nothing I love more than the sudden burst of color as flowers pop out of frozen, scraggly trees in New York City after months of cold. Okay, the one thing I love more is running around in a skimpy dress and flip-flops on a balmy, New York summer night that will never cool down.

I'm not a regular morning caffeinator, but today I need a boost, so I stop at my favorite corner café. The adorable barista smiles when he sees me and I stiffen, afraid he'll sense that I imagined him doing naughty things to me last night.

“Ciao bella,” he says, still clinging to a slight Italian accent, even though his family moved from Sicily when he was fourteen.

“Not bella today,” I say.

“You're the best thing I've seen this morning.” That makes me feel a little better.

“Thank you,” I say. “But my head is pounding and my stomach is queasy. Think a latté and a croissant might help?”

“Let's give it a try.”

I watch his arm muscles bulge in all the right places as he twists the espresso into the machine and foams the milk. “So, what did you do last night?” he asks.

“It was my birthday. I drank too much.”

“Happy birthday!” he says, reaching into the pastry display to pull out a cookie. “For you.”

“Thank you.”

“Please smile. I can't make it through the day without seeing you smile once.”

I grimace at him and he flashes his lovely white teeth in response. He doesn't let me pay for my coffee and croissant. Creeping up St. Mark's Place, I try to pick up my pace, knowing I have a magazine to ship. The sun is shining much too brightly. I wonder if sunglasses stop working at some point—mine don't seem to be doing their job today. This particular block is never calm; even before the rows of dirty T-shirt and hat shops open, there's a certain noise and griminess to it. A pile of dejected Gap underwear is lying on top of a Dumpster—the ones that say, “I love you, I love you, I love you…” in different fonts and sizes and the ones covered in red hearts on a navy background. Some poor kid whose girlfriend dumped him must have trashed them last night. A band of skinny boys in tight, leather pants, who are probably crawling out of their K-holes, shiver around greasy slices of pizza on the corner. A homeless guy is sprawled facedown on the curb, covered in a kid's sleeping bag with cartoon bunnies and pink flowers on it. I take in the detritus of the night before, barely able to muster a smile when a bouncy girl with a shaved head skips by with a waddling corgi on one leash and a dappled dachshund on the other. They're wearing matching orange parkas.

“Hey, precious,” I manage. They grin up at me in unison. Their mommy throws knives at me out of her eyes before continuing to bounce. Mean people should not be allowed to have dogs.

Impinging on my space, a cell phone rings. The lounge lizard walking in front of me still decked out in last night's purple, shimmering three-piece suit yanks out his phone, at the same time as the annoying girl behind me screeches into her phone, “Where are you?”

“I'm on St. Mark's?” says the lounge lizard. I'm surrounded.

“Where on St. Mark's?” says the girl behind me.

“I'm on St. Mark's,” says the guy, louder now.

“No.
Where
on St. Mark's,” the girl screams.

“Oh,
where
on St. Mark's!” the guy screams back.

I stop in my tracks, causing Annoying Girl to bump into me. I turn around to face a teenage toothpick sporting a checkered minidress under fake white fur, and a bleached-out hairdo two feet high. “He's right there,” I say, pointing at her buddy prancing three paces in front of us.

As I continue walking, she shouts, “Oh! My! God!”

“That's, like, so fucking weird,” says the lounge lizard. Completely forgotten by the whole freak reunion, I walk more quickly until their shrieks fade out of earshot. It occurs to me that at least I'm not thinking about Jake. Then I see a couple making out at a bus stop and tears fill my eyes. “He's not my fucking boyfriend,” I growl at myself.

When I duck into the deli next to my office, the cashier, who must be about twenty, is showing a sonogram picture of his baby to a guy standing next to me at the counter.

“Tres meses!”
he says, beaming. His sweetness makes me weepy again.

Sam is the only one in the office when I get there and she's chattering on the phone. “I'm thinking of going with lilac,” she says, turning toward me. Her mouth literally falls open when she sees me. I wonder if she might drool on the back of her chair, before recalling that she doesn't do normal-human-being things like drool. “
Au contraire.
You look outstanding in lilac,” she says. “Hey, can I call you back?” She hangs up and says, “You were so drunk last night, I thought for sure you wouldn't be here until noon.”

“We've got a magazine to put to bed,” I say, dumping my stuff by my chair but not removing my sunglasses.

“How are you?” she asks.

“Thirty-two and still standing,” I tell her.

“That's a start,” she says.

“I brought doughnuts,” I say, placing a box of Krispy Kremes on the drafting table in the middle of the room and selecting a glazed one for myself. “I need them to soak up whatever poison is still in me.” I eat half of it in one bite, as Samantha jumps out of her seat and grabs two doughnuts for herself. My petite co-worker has the metabolism of a professional basketball player.

“Hey, have you proofed the text yet?” she asks. “I just read your Cate Blanchett piece.
C'est magnifique.
”

“Thanks. Yeah, doing that right now.”

I take the pile of articles from her and sit back down at my desk to read them for what feels like the eighteenth time. The pounding in my head has dulled to a mere thud. After getting halfway through the first page, I feel myself drawn to the phone. I want to call him so badly it hurts, but I won't. First of all, he'd still be sleeping—he rarely gets up before two. Second, I have to break myself of the habit. I snap the rubber band on my wrist and focus on the sting as I try to dream up a way out of my funk. I could eat another doughnut and think about how no one will ever love me again if I get fat. I could go outside and pet puppies, but that would mean moving. I cruise around Friendster for a while, inviting everyone with a picture of a dog to be my friend. For some reason, a black Lab called Bert I've befriended, who loves “barking, playing demolish my squeaky toy, and smelling other dogs' weewees,” reminds me of my chat with Alicia yesterday, the one that invoked strangers' sweaty socks, admirable pectoral muscles, and the fringe benefits of hunting for a roommate. I pick up the phone.

Clancy, one editor who gets to work on time, answers on the first ring.

“I was just about to call you,” she says even before I announce myself. The wonders of Caller ID. “You're a genius.”

“Really?”

“Just had an editorial meeting. Doing a whole section for July on alternative ways to meet men. Your story could fit in nicely.”

“Cool,” I say and hold my breath.

“But you'd have to do it,” she says.

“Do what?”

“Test it. Look for a room. Make the necessary phone calls. Hit the pavement.”

“But I'm not looking for an apartment,” I say, feeling like I've had this conversation before.

“Jacquie, you're a reporter. It's research.”

“Hmm,” I say. Why does everyone want to make a dishonest woman of me? When I even slightly rumpled the truth as a child, my mom would see it all over my nervous little face and punish me. I learned my lesson. I don't want to lie to anyone. I just want to write a good story and make a few extra bucks. “I'm not a very good liar,” I tell Clancy.

“You're not lying. You're going undercover,” she says. “Now get to work. A thousand words. You've got six weeks. Two dollars a word. I'll put a contract in the mail.” Two dollars a word? That's two thousand dollars! That's what I make at my job in a month, working ten, eleven hours a day. Jesus Christ. I spring out of my chair, sprint into the hallway, and scream at the top of my lungs, all the while jumping around like a spaz. A FedEx guy leaving the graphic design firm down the hall smiles at me and shakes his head.

I return from my episode with my heart racing, convinced that I'm utterly incapable of facing “10 Awesomest Flicks to Watch While Taking Bong Hits,” which is next on my pile of articles to proofread this morning.

“Hey, Sam, where is everyone?” I ask.

“Steve is at a breakfast meeting with an investor, Chester has class until eleven, and Spencer and Trevor are MIA. Apparently. Steve called and said you're in charge, get to work, he's counting on you. Maybe you should think twice before planning your next birthday party on the night before we ship.” Sam is a self-righteous twit.
N'est-ce pas?

Everyone's momentary absence buys me some time to slack off, and if there was ever a morning when I needed to slack off, it's today. I type “craigslist.org” into my browser. “New York. Housing. Rooms/shared.” Boom. About a million listings come up. I click on them one by one, at first uncertain what I'm looking for. Most ads are thoughtful enough to include a neighborhood in the heading, so I click on apartments in downtown Manhattan—the Village, SoHo, NoLita, the Lower East Side. I figure if I actually have to visit these apartments, I should stick as close to home as possible. It occurs to me that I should also focus my energies on apartments with outrageously high rents. I'm not going to have to come up with the money because I'm not really renting the place, but the piece is about meeting guys I'd like to date, so I should look at apartments likely to be inhabited by guys I'd want to date—i.e., financially sound ones. God knows I don't need another struggling, unsuccessful new boyfriend. Done with boytoys! Done with commitment-phobes! Done with poor, starving jerkoffs who won't be able to provide for me and my future children! Tribeca lofts appeal to me, as do charming brownstones in the West Village and cozy, sun-filled floor-throughs with gardens in Cobble Hill. On the first few pages of ads, the most promising apartments are inhabited by women or groups of twenty-something guys. It takes me fifteen minutes of solid browsing to find something interesting enough to investigate: a filmmaker renting a room in his 2,500-square-foot loft in SoHo. He's asking $2,200, which sure qualifies as a lot for half an apartment.